Dead Frontier 2
Dead Frontier 2 Dead Frontier 2 is a free-to-play Third-person shooter MMORPG video game, developed and published by Creaky Corpse Ltd. Dead Frontier 2 is developed in the Unity game engine and focuses on gameplay in an open world, survival horror setting. The game entered early access for PC through Steam (software) on 5 September, 2018. Gameplay Dead Frontier 2 first requires the free registration of an account on Steam (software) from the user. In order to access the download of the game, the user must download the free steam client and navigate to the game on the store. Once the game is downloaded, the user must accept the Dead Frontier 2 Terms Of Use both on steam (before the game launches) and in-game (after account registration), then complete another free registration of an account in which will be associated with Dead Frontier 2. An email confirmation will be required on the provided email to fully access all features within the game, but is not completely necessary. Once registration is complete, the user will then be prompted to create a character where they are free to choose gender, skin colour, facial features and hair style as well as providing the character a name. These names are unique across the entire game and can only be used on one character. Once the character is created, the user is now ready to explore and experience the open world, survival horror environment Dead Frontier 2 has to offer. Dead Frontier 2 takes place in small towns along the outskirts of Fairview City, the city in which the game's prequel (Dead Frontier) takes place. The player begins their journey in Dallbow, the first of many infected towns introduced to players in the beginning. Either alone or with up to 8 friends, take on the hoards of infected awaiting at every corner while scavenging the post-apocalyptic, procedurally generated world within Dead Frontier 2. With a skill point based progression system, level up characters by looting, slaying zombies, and completing quests, or just seek wealth through the totally player-driven marketplace in a world that regenerates daily. Players are able to travel throughout the game world to different outposts each with their own defined difficulty, progress through a prestige system, fight numerous different types of infected and bosses, explore and scavenge buildings, or even PVP other players with the numerous weapons at their disposal. As an MMORPG, the player is able to interact with other players in many different ways. The game offers a mailbox system within outposts to send private messages to other players, an in-game server chat, a private-trading system and a community server that can be accessed through the third party application Discord. History and Development 2016 Dead Frontier 2 was said to have began development approximately late 2016 after the serious realization of the many issues Dead Frontier was facing. First signs came once many of the popular web browsers used today began to discontinue support for NPAPI plugins due to the serious security flaws of the interface. Dead Frontier being a browser based game relied on the use of NPAPI and would have required some serious restructuring. A standalone client was later released for Dead Frontier, but due to the way the game was programmed on the server side, this still required the use of browsers to run properly. Along with the discontinuation of NPAPI, another tool in which Dead Frontier relied on, Adobe Flash also showed signs of future discontinuation due to age and lack of support. As of July 25, 2017, Adobe officially announced that Flash was going to be discontinued by the year 2020 and if Dead Frontier was to be continued, it would require a full conversion to HTML5. While there were many problems on the technical side slowly leading to the demise of Dead Frontier, the game also had it's own core issues, such as a "power creep" model to the addition of new content, pay to win elements, and an issue of inflation within the games economy. The ultimate decision came down that a new and modern game was the best plan of action for the franchise. October, 2017 With rumors and speculation arising about the future of Dead Frontier, on October 29, 2017, "The Big Announcement" came, and with it, the reveal of Dead Frontier 2.This was the first development update the community had received about work being done on Dead Frontier 2, the Creaky Corpse blog was now the official source for information on the new game. The blog post detailed the future plans for Dead Frontier, incentives within Dead Frontier 2 for existing players, the current progress on Dead Frontier 2, and a long explanation as to why support for Dead Frontier is being temporarily discontinued. In the blog post, Adminpwn (The creator of Dead Frontier) acknowledged the many design mistakes he had introduced into Dead Frontier over the years and assured that Dead Frontier 2 was going to follow a free-to-play, non pay-to-win model. Along with the release of this blog post, a rough launch date of April 2018 was given. December, 2017 On December 9, 2017, the second blog post of Dead Frontier 2 development updates arrived. This blog post starts off with a "Thank You" from Adminpwn for the overwhelmingly positive support on the games initial announcement from the community. While the response was positive, many users by this stage were still skeptical due to the failed launch of Doom Warrior. The blog post read on with Adminpwn explaining in depth how much work he had put into the interior designs in Dead Frontier 2, and the first news about procedural generation being used in the game. The blog closed with another checklist outlining progress on the development goals yet to come and those that have been completed, and the first early development screenshots of Dead Frontier 2 in-game. January, 2018 On the 13 of January, 2018 the third blog post of Dead Frontier 2 development updates was posted with some much more disappointing news and a much more serious community vote. The blog began explaining a number of life issues Adminpwn had struggled through that were causing setbacks in the games development process, to which he told the community the previously announced release date of April 21, 2018 was looking shaky. While progress on the game had been made, not enough had been done to mark anything new from the previous blog post off as finished. Following this, he left the community with a decision, three options were available to choose from. The first option was to release the game on April 21, 2018 regardless of development state, the second option was to begin a closed beta test on April 21, 2018 with a small sample size of the community, and the third option was to delay the games release date allowing more time for development. (A rough estimate of an additional 2 months was given) With this decision being left to the community, the blog post closed with a new image of the concept art/box logo of Dead Frontier 2. February, 2018 When February 18, 2018 came around, the fourth blog post of Dead Frontier 2 development updates came with it, and so did the official steam page for the game. This development blog began by introducing the steam page and the start of the wishlist campaign to gain some traction on the games release. Due to steam requiring at least one video of the game to be able to create a page, users got their first look at a small, 1 minute and 40 second video of gameplay. In this gameplay some interiors were shown, a minor combat scene, a look at a new ability and even a glance of the outdoors. With the good news, the community's final decision from the previous blog post was also announced, the game would be delayed until summer, 2018 allowing more time for development on a polished version for the game. July was mentioned to be an ideal date, but not confirmed or set in stone. The blog post closed with a brief progress update including the completion of bosses, NPC's, and missions, near completion of the UI, and the addition of active abilities such as kicking, dodging, and sneaking. March, 2018 March 22, 2018 was the first day in which a blog post was released, but not for a development update. This blog post was the first time the community was able to get involved with the development of Dead Frontier 2 for a reward. The writing contest was announced giving users the chance to write stories that will be used in Dead Frontier 2, users were given a set of guidelines to follow and for each writing piece that would be accepted into the game, $50 USD and credit in the game for the piece would be rewarded in return for the contribution. On March 30, 2018 graphics was the discussion of the day with the newly released fifth development update for Dead Frontier 2. With the release of the gameplay video many concerns arose about required computer hardware to be able to run Dead Frontier 2, the graphics looked very modernized and intensive. In this development blog, it started off strong by introducing the new potato mode graphics option that is available to the many users who are still using very old hardware, along with a comparison of how each option looks on the potato, low, and high graphics settings. Further, some new minimum requirements were introduced lowering the previous minimum requirements even more, down to an Intel Core i3 or AMD FX processor and a Radeon HD 8550 or equivalent graphics card. The blog went on to discuss the first wave of stress testing emulating up to 40,000 players on the servers and some of the multiplayer server locations in Dead Frontier 2, these servers were located in the United States, United Kingdom, and Poland with future servers in Singapore and South America. To close, the blog gave users a list of features still missing from the game, with intentions to complete them by Summer, 2018. Here Adminpwn stated that his main priorities were on ensuring that core gameplay was as addicting and fun as possible. May, 2018 May 5, 2018 was the release of the sixth development blog for Dead Frontier 2 ranging from the highly anticipated topic of bosses, to more information on core game development. The blog began with a teaser GIF of the previously renowned 'Tendril', known as an annoying mutation of infected in Dead Frontier, appearing as a boss in a small segment of the trailer. Continuing on, Adminpwn came to the decision that while the release of Dead Frontier 2 was not going to be delayed any longer, he still felt the game would not be complete enough to be launched as a full title. This being said, the game was to be launched in early access regardless of development state by the launch date. It was assured that the core gameplay of Dead Frontier 2 was going to meet his expectations for how he wanted the game's launch to be, but some of the additional features would come after launch due to this focus. Some smaller news and announcements were also made, including the launch of a patreon for the game, the official Dead Frontier 2 community Discord server, and a minor update that the writing contest had over 1,000 entries, and winners were not yet determined. The blog concluded with the announcement of the capacity of multiplayer servers in the game being increased from 4 to 8 players giving a better MMO feeling, the addition of the Singapore server, and finally some additional concept art for more bosses to appear in the game. The winners of the writing contest were decided on May 11, 2018 in a newly released blog post. There were a total of 17 announced winners who will have their works added into Dead Frontier 2. May 30, 2018's release of the seventh development blog for Dead Frontier 2 was the third blog users received in the span of the month of May, the big topic to close off the month and begin real excitement was that it contained the final and official release date for Dead Frontier 2. The blog began with another promotion to raise wishlists for the game on Steam, the more wishlists the game received, the more attention it would get. According to Adminpwn, if the game achieved the goal of 50,000 wishlists it would be featured on the front page of steam granting maximum exposure. As a reward to the users who did wishlist, a 20 minute, unedited gameplay video was offered should the goal of 50,000 wishlists be achieved prior to launch day. Following, an official and absolute final release date was given, Dead Frontier 2 was set to launch at 10:00 AM GMT, on August 31, 2018. An announcement on the Alpha Testing process came after explaining that an application process to select testers would be far too inefficient given time constraints, and that instead a small sample of people active from the community Discord server would be semi-randomly picked when the time comes. To close the information packed blog, users were left with a wall of images displaying each of the Dead Frontier rewards given for achieving the milestones and what they will look like in Dead Frontier 2. July, 2018 On July 6, 2018 the eighth development blog for Dead Frontier 2 was posted and the official trailer for the game was released. This trailer caught the community off guard when the youtube video was titled "Hypnospace Outlaw", in a comical mistake by Creaky Corpse, the URL in both the email sent out to fans and the blog post was incorrect, and promoting the wrong game. This mistake was corrected shortly after a number of users reported the error. The contents of this development blog were very brief, it was announced that marketing had to unfortunately be delayed due to the major focus on game development for Dead Frontier 2 and it was encouraged that users continue to promote wishlisting in order to aid marketing. In terms of development, not very much was covered aside from the fact that only minor features remain uncompleted and the core gameplay was complete. It was said the current state was simply doing bug fixes and polishing the game. Alpha Testers was also a touched subject, with the announcement that Dead Frontier 2 was prepared to enter the Alpha Testing phase, and testers would begin to be contacted on July 7, 2018. The blog closed with a number of new, high quality screenshots of new infected yet to be seen, different interior layouts and general gameplay. While unannounced, on July 12, 2018 Dead Frontier 2 officially entered the Alpha Testing stage with a total number of 26 testers including Developers and Game Moderators. Alpha Testers were required to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement as the game was not yet prepared for public release. August, 2018 August 5, 2018 was the date of the ninth, and final Dead Frontier 2 development blog before the Early Access launch of the game on August 31, 2018. With a count of just over 42,000 wishlists on Steam, Adminpwn decided to release an early 10 minute, unedited gameplay video of Dead Frontier 2 in attempt of making a final push for the 50,000 wishlist goal. The blog began stating that the game is comfortably in a ready position for showing to the public. While Alpha Testing for Dead Frontier 2 had began weeks ago, the blog now reveals the state of the testing, and the positive feedback given by Alpha Testers for the game. The blog continued with the reveal of one final checklist in order of priority for the game, all of which it's contents were side features not effecting the core gameplay. To end the blog, the Dead Frontier rewards system was said to be releasing in the next few coming days, and this would be the last development update until the public get their hands on Dead Frontier 2.19 On August 8, 2018 the Dead Frontier rewards system for users who have achieved milestones in the first game was launched and announced in a new blog post. Users were instructed to go onto a specific page on the Dead Frontier website and login to their accounts. Once on the page, it was required to enter an email in which the rewards would then be tied to when Dead Frontier 2 launches. This feature also allowed the reservation of both usernames and clan names. On August 24, 2018 Dead Frontier 2 entered closed beta, (also known as pre-early access) and was the end of the NDA alpha testers needed to sign in July. At approximately 2:20 AM EDT alpha testers began to share their knowledge and thoughts about the game to the public, some even showing gameplay as they answered the numerous questions asked by the community. Throughout the day Steam codes were sent out to YouTube content creators and Twitch streamers giving them the opportunity to try the game out for themselves prior to release, and help test things for the early access launch. On August 29, 2018 just two days before the planned announcement of Dead Frontier 2, Adminpwn released a surprise announcement indicating issues with preparing for launch day and personal problems leading to another delay for the game's launch. This announcement began immediately by stating a new launch date for Dead Frontier 2 on September 5, 2018 at 12:00 PM UDT. The announcement continued to explain the issues Neil (Adminpwn) and Matthew Bowie (Niosop) were experiencing trying to prepare additional servers for the seriously increased hype of the game, it stated the game could still release on August 31 but it would be a rushing mess with the possibility of introducing more issues. Neil (Adminpwn) closed the announcement explaining how the sleepless nights and time spent working were negatively effecting his well being and that the decision to delay the game a few days is for the greater good. This announcement led to mass confusion as "UDT" is not a real timezone, staff for the game were notifying people to assume 12:00 PM UTC unless otherwise stated. September 2018 On '''September 5th, 2018 '''Dead Frontier 2 was released into early access.